The transfer of information from human speech to print is today generally accomplished manually. However, a major disadvantage with this practice is the speed of information transfer. Typically, an executive might dictate to a secretary, either by means of shorthand or a dictating machine. The secretary must then type the information into a typewriter or word processing system, at speeds that rarely exceed 100 words per minute.
It is known that a substantial amount of time and effort in preparing letters or similar documents could be saved if typing certain commonly used words, syllables or symbols having a plurality of characters, could be initiated automatically when encountered during the normal typing functions. Included among the words and syllables coming within this category are "and" "the" "ing", as well as other words and syllables having a greater or lesser number of characters. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,289,804 and 3,617,722.
It is also known to record information encoded by a keyboard on a magnetic tape and later use such information to command a computer controlled machine. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,530,239.
Further, the use of a single key to represent a word or group of characters can either be done mechanically (by hardware) or through use of a suitably programmed general purpose digital computer (by software). See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,717,666; 3,530,239; and 4,068,089.
However, none of the known prior art provides a convenient and easily usable system for rapidly stenographically transcribing and entering into a word processing system both a large number of frequently used words with a minimum number of key strokes, and a still larger number of somewhat less common but normally occurring words. Further, no system currently exists to make one, two or three keyboard entry codes easily learned and easily remembered and thus "user friendly", in combination with the use of a larger number of additional codes or keyboard abbreviations.
It is, therefore, a general object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system overcoming the known problems in the prior art.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system which permits the most frequently used words of the language to be entered or coded by use of a single key.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a second level of frequently used words which can be entered or coded through use of merely two key strokes, sometimes referred to herein as two letter codes.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system with an "x" code series of up to 26 suffixes such that for instance a coding "xl" would transfer information meaning the suffix "ly" and coding "xi" would input the suffix "ing" etc.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a computer based stenographic system having a "y" code series of 26 or 36 frequently used words such that for instance "ya" would represent the word "was" and "yw" could represent "would".
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system having a "z" code series which can provide up to 26 or 36 user defined words, such that for a lawyer "xp" would be plaintiff, "xd" could be defendant, "xl" could be complaint, "x9" could be judgment, etc.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system with a dictionary which consists of a list of words sorted according to the first two letters and last letter of the word. If there are two or more words in the dictionary having the same first two and last letter they would be, in the terminology of this invention a "collision". In such cases, software displays the words in the collision with a number displayed next to each word. The user then quickly and easily selects the correct word, with the correct spelling, by simply pressing the appropriate numeric key.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a computer aided stenographic system whereby the most frequently used words in the language could be typed in one keystroke, the next most frequent category by two keystrokes, and the majority of words by three key strokes if there is no "collision", and with four or five keystrokes if there is a collision.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a dictionary which can be specialized for normal business correspondence, for lawyers, for doctors, or other specialized users.
It is another object of the present invention to have a dictionary of reasonably optimum size so as to contain the words needed for particular useage, but not be so large as to create an unduly high number of collisions which slow down the ultimate production of a finished piece of text.
It is a further object of the present invention to have a computer aided stenographic system, which allows the user to switch between stenographic modes, with special codes, and a conventional typewriter mode whereby a word can be typed in full.